A Georgia mother will spend the next 15 years in prison following a guilty plea in a Forsyth County court. Karima Jiwani, 41, pleaded guilty on February 13, 2025, to attempted murder and first-degree cruelty to children in connection to a crime committed years earlier. Jiwani reportedly gave birth to a baby girl and abandoned her in a plastic bag in the woods a short time later. Investigators dubbed the child “Baby India,” and it took nearly four years to identify Jiwani as her mother.
According to WXIA, the case began in June of 2019. A family reportedly heard a baby crying in the woods on Daves Creek Road in Forsyth County. They called for help, and police and medics arrived, saving the infant’s life. A DNA test eventually led to baby India’s father and a major breakthrough in the case. He reportedly had no idea the baby existed. With his help, police identified Jiwani as the mother.
“This child was tied up in a plastic bag and thrown into the woods like a bag of trash,” Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman told WXIA. “I can’t understand that. I truly wish I could. I struggle, but I don’t know how you can understand that. It literally is one of (the) saddest things I’ve ever seen.”
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Freeman said he did not understand Jiwani’s thought process. “How a parent – and I happen to be one too – can do such a callous thing is both incomprehensible to all of us and infuriating,” he said, per WXIA. “I’m dumbfounded by any reasoning that could be there and how someone could leave their own child to die.”
Sadly, it appears this wasn’t the first time Jiwani hid a pregnancy. “Evidence also reveals a history of hidden and concealed pregnancies and surprise births in Ms. Jiwani’s history,” Freeman said.
Police declined to share information about the baby after her mother’s arrest, but Freeman confirmed the child was happy and healthy.
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Although Jiwani’s attorneys tried to argue that the mother suffered from serious mental health problems, prosecutors believed she abandoned her baby deliberately.
Jiwani could have avoided prosecution had she taken advantage of the Safe Haven law. Per the law, “Under the Safe Place for Newborns Act, Georgia law gives criminal immunity to a mother who leaves her baby with a staff member or volunteer of a medical facility, fire station, or police station if the child is no more than thirty days old. The mother is not required to show proof of her identity or address.”
A judge sentenced Jiwani to 30 years – 15 will be in prison, and the other 15 on probation, WXIA reported.
